Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 1013
August 18, 2015
Team Taylor or Team Miley? Zayn Malik and Calvin Harris fight it out on Twitter
Less than a month after Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift went at it on Twitter (with some added input from Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry), Swift inadvertently finds herself at the center of another 140-character conflict. Earlier this week, ex-One Direction member Zayn Malik retweeted a meme favorably comparing Miley Cyrus’ laissez-faire approach to the streaming economy with Taylor Swift’s more draconian views. Swift’s boyfriend Calvin Harris, sniffing some (bad) blood in the water, quickly jumped in to defend her. Here’s the meme Zayn retweeted, now deleted from the original account: https://twitter.com/RobLives4Love/sta... And here is Harris’ response, which, according to Malik's fans, was aimed directly at the former One Direction star: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Malik, for his part, didn’t appreciate being talked down to by the (slightly older, not exactly denture-wearing) EDM producer. https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... Harris, clearly well-versed in the Taylor Swift School of public relations, then tried to calm tensions: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Grammaticians: Remain on high alert in the event of a Katy Perry response.Less than a month after Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift went at it on Twitter (with some added input from Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry), Swift inadvertently finds herself at the center of another 140-character conflict. Earlier this week, ex-One Direction member Zayn Malik retweeted a meme favorably comparing Miley Cyrus’ laissez-faire approach to the streaming economy with Taylor Swift’s more draconian views. Swift’s boyfriend Calvin Harris, sniffing some (bad) blood in the water, quickly jumped in to defend her. Here’s the meme Zayn retweeted, now deleted from the original account: https://twitter.com/RobLives4Love/sta... And here is Harris’ response, which, according to Malik's fans, was aimed directly at the former One Direction star: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Malik, for his part, didn’t appreciate being talked down to by the (slightly older, not exactly denture-wearing) EDM producer. https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... Harris, clearly well-versed in the Taylor Swift School of public relations, then tried to calm tensions: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Grammaticians: Remain on high alert in the event of a Katy Perry response.Less than a month after Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift went at it on Twitter (with some added input from Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry), Swift inadvertently finds herself at the center of another 140-character conflict. Earlier this week, ex-One Direction member Zayn Malik retweeted a meme favorably comparing Miley Cyrus’ laissez-faire approach to the streaming economy with Taylor Swift’s more draconian views. Swift’s boyfriend Calvin Harris, sniffing some (bad) blood in the water, quickly jumped in to defend her. Here’s the meme Zayn retweeted, now deleted from the original account: https://twitter.com/RobLives4Love/sta... And here is Harris’ response, which, according to Malik's fans, was aimed directly at the former One Direction star: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Malik, for his part, didn’t appreciate being talked down to by the (slightly older, not exactly denture-wearing) EDM producer. https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/... Harris, clearly well-versed in the Taylor Swift School of public relations, then tried to calm tensions: https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... https://twitter.com/CalvinHarris/stat... Grammaticians: Remain on high alert in the event of a Katy Perry response.
Melissa McCarthy’s fashion revolution: Tear down the plus-sized section and “stop segregating women”
Let this be the year we keep moving toward shedding useless and outdated labels. In June, the United States finally recognized that "gay marriage" can be recognized officially as what it truly is — simply, marriage. Earlier this month, Target got the memo that there's no difference between "building sets" and "girls' building sets" and announced it would remove gender specific labels from its toy aisles. So what do you say we recognize the reality that, as Melissa McCarthy explains it, "Women come in all sizes"? Your Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning pretend best friend is at last launching her long promised clothing line — and with it, she's on a mission to challenge the term "plus-sized." In a conversation this week with Refinery 29, McCarthy, whose background is in design, talked about her new Melissa McCarthy Seven7 project, and how she wants to create clothing that recognizes all bodies.
"Seventy percent of women in the United States are a size 14 or above," she says, "and that’s technically 'plus-size,' so you're taking your biggest category of people and telling them, 'You’re not really worthy.' I find that very strange. I also find it very bad business. It doesn’t make a lot of sense numbers-wise. It's like, if you open a restaurant and you say, 'We're primarily gonna serve people that don't eat.' It's like, what? You would be nuts. Yet, people do it with clothing lines all the time, and no one seems to have a problem with it. I just don't get why we always have to group everything into a good or bad, right or wrong category. I just think, if you’re going to make women’s clothing, make women’s clothing. Designers that put everyone in categories are over-complicating something that should be easy."Complicated is right, Just last year, J. Crew — the brand that has a jean called "the toothpick" — took thinspiration to a new level when it announced it was introducing a size 000. At the time, fashion blogger Belle noted that "Sizing downward… feeds into the notion that clothing size is a scarlet letter." Like many retailers, J. Crew does not use actual size 16-20 models to depict its very special size 16-20 wares. McCarthy, meanwhile, has for years been open about the challenges of being a non model-sized female — even a very successful one — in an industry that caters to a very specific and very small body type. Last year she told Redbook, "Two Oscars ago, I couldn’t find anybody to do a dress for me. I asked five or six designers — very high-level ones who make lots of dresses for people — and they all said no." Her line, which will be carried via Nordstrom, Macy’s, HSN, Bloomingdale’s, Lane Bryant and Evans, aims to shift that. And there's already evidence that the time is ripe. Earlier this year, Target collaborated with some of its most vocal fashion blogger critics to come up with its new Ava & Viv plus-sized collection. Tess Holliday launched a movement with the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards — and became the largest model signed to a major agency. Curvy Ashley Graham became the first size 16 model to appear in an ad for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. And this summer, Women's Running magazine made healthy, fit — and large — New Yorker Erica Schenk its cover model. McCarthy says she wants to change the stigma that comes from treating women who go above a size 8 as if they need to banished to another division of clothing.
"I don’t like the segregated plus section," she says. "You’re saying: ‘You don’t get what everybody else gets. You have to go shop up by the tire section.' I have a couple of very big retailers that I think are going to help me chip away at that in a very meaningful way, and I’m really excited about it. I’m not ready to announce them yet, but they agreed to just put me on the floor. I said, ‘Run the sizes as I make them and let friends go shopping with their friends. Stop segregating women.’ And they said,'Okay.'"Sounds like a perfectly sane plan. We don't tell women whose shoes are above a size 8 that they're plus-sized and make them shop in a different part of the DSW. Why do we have to be so weird and shaming about clothing? Why do we pretend that size 4 is the norm, when it's not? At this point, though, change is still coming one step at a time — McCarthy's own shop on HSN currently features a separate designation for plus sizes. But at least the models represent a more realistic array of body types. And McCarthy's challenge to be more inclusive, less hostile to women, is long overdue, and extremely welcome. "I want getting dressed to be fun again," she says. "I believe that women deserve better choices."Let this be the year we keep moving toward shedding useless and outdated labels. In June, the United States finally recognized that "gay marriage" can be recognized officially as what it truly is — simply, marriage. Earlier this month, Target got the memo that there's no difference between "building sets" and "girls' building sets" and announced it would remove gender specific labels from its toy aisles. So what do you say we recognize the reality that, as Melissa McCarthy explains it, "Women come in all sizes"? Your Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning pretend best friend is at last launching her long promised clothing line — and with it, she's on a mission to challenge the term "plus-sized." In a conversation this week with Refinery 29, McCarthy, whose background is in design, talked about her new Melissa McCarthy Seven7 project, and how she wants to create clothing that recognizes all bodies.
"Seventy percent of women in the United States are a size 14 or above," she says, "and that’s technically 'plus-size,' so you're taking your biggest category of people and telling them, 'You’re not really worthy.' I find that very strange. I also find it very bad business. It doesn’t make a lot of sense numbers-wise. It's like, if you open a restaurant and you say, 'We're primarily gonna serve people that don't eat.' It's like, what? You would be nuts. Yet, people do it with clothing lines all the time, and no one seems to have a problem with it. I just don't get why we always have to group everything into a good or bad, right or wrong category. I just think, if you’re going to make women’s clothing, make women’s clothing. Designers that put everyone in categories are over-complicating something that should be easy."Complicated is right, Just last year, J. Crew — the brand that has a jean called "the toothpick" — took thinspiration to a new level when it announced it was introducing a size 000. At the time, fashion blogger Belle noted that "Sizing downward… feeds into the notion that clothing size is a scarlet letter." Like many retailers, J. Crew does not use actual size 16-20 models to depict its very special size 16-20 wares. McCarthy, meanwhile, has for years been open about the challenges of being a non model-sized female — even a very successful one — in an industry that caters to a very specific and very small body type. Last year she told Redbook, "Two Oscars ago, I couldn’t find anybody to do a dress for me. I asked five or six designers — very high-level ones who make lots of dresses for people — and they all said no." Her line, which will be carried via Nordstrom, Macy’s, HSN, Bloomingdale’s, Lane Bryant and Evans, aims to shift that. And there's already evidence that the time is ripe. Earlier this year, Target collaborated with some of its most vocal fashion blogger critics to come up with its new Ava & Viv plus-sized collection. Tess Holliday launched a movement with the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards — and became the largest model signed to a major agency. Curvy Ashley Graham became the first size 16 model to appear in an ad for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. And this summer, Women's Running magazine made healthy, fit — and large — New Yorker Erica Schenk its cover model. McCarthy says she wants to change the stigma that comes from treating women who go above a size 8 as if they need to banished to another division of clothing.
"I don’t like the segregated plus section," she says. "You’re saying: ‘You don’t get what everybody else gets. You have to go shop up by the tire section.' I have a couple of very big retailers that I think are going to help me chip away at that in a very meaningful way, and I’m really excited about it. I’m not ready to announce them yet, but they agreed to just put me on the floor. I said, ‘Run the sizes as I make them and let friends go shopping with their friends. Stop segregating women.’ And they said,'Okay.'"Sounds like a perfectly sane plan. We don't tell women whose shoes are above a size 8 that they're plus-sized and make them shop in a different part of the DSW. Why do we have to be so weird and shaming about clothing? Why do we pretend that size 4 is the norm, when it's not? At this point, though, change is still coming one step at a time — McCarthy's own shop on HSN currently features a separate designation for plus sizes. But at least the models represent a more realistic array of body types. And McCarthy's challenge to be more inclusive, less hostile to women, is long overdue, and extremely welcome. "I want getting dressed to be fun again," she says. "I believe that women deserve better choices."
Hillary Clinton condemns Shell’s Arctic play: Drilling “not worth the risk”
There's no longer any question about where Hillary Clinton stands on the question of whether the Arctic should be opened to oil and gas drilling. A day after the Obama administration gave Shell its final permission to start drilling in the sensitive region, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate took to Twitter to voice her displeasure:
[embedtweet id="633629814713397249"]
Her campaign has confirmed that Clinton does, indeed, firmly oppose Arctic drilling, a position that helps to solidify her environmentalist credentials and which sets her up in opposition to President Obama. His stance on Arctic drilling, when held up next to his climate change advocacy, has been widely criticized by greens as hypocritical.
Clinton's tweeted sentiment is much more in line with the environmental community's position on Arctic drilling: that knowing what we know about the inherent risks of operating in that region, and about our unpreparedness to deal with a potential spill, it's just a plain bad idea. Moreover, if we want to avoid the worst impacts of man-made climate change, experts say, the Arctic's oil and gas reserves must remain in the ground.
On the other looming question -- where she stands on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline -- Clinton continues to remain mum.
Patrick Stewart shares a big, wet smooch with Conan O’Brien because why not
Back in June, an image of "Star Trek" legend Patrick Stewart kissing BFF Sir Ian McKellen on the red carpet made headlines, many underscoring the two legends' unparalleled "bromance." Monday night, following the release of Stewart's dazzling new portrait of a right-wing pundit in "Blunt Talk," Stewart decided to dismantle O'Brien's theory that he only kisses "Sirs." You can probably figure out what happened next. Watch the clip courtesy of Vulture below:
Being Blunt: Modern-Day Butlers with Multiple Skills in Demand
From Batman’s Alfred Pennyworth to “Downton Abbey’s” Charles Carson, media’s portrayal of the manservant -- or butler as it is more commonly known -- has ranged from the absurd to the realistic. Now a new manservant is playing an important role in the Starz show “Blunt Talk,” starring Patrick Stewart as British expatriate Walter Blunt, a charismatic but self-destructive American news host. Blunt relies on his manservant, Harry, to help him navigate his messy personal and professional life. The term “manservant” may sound like a quant vestige of a long-ago age. The term butler – or occasionally house manager -- is more widely used and preferred because it sounds less demeaning, say domestic help firms. Regardless of the name, the demand for such jobs is strong enough to keep a number of schools busy training candidates. Among them are the Australian Butler School and The International Butler Academy in The Netherlands. They place students in positions worldwide. A three-year-old, San Francisco company, Manservants offers a whimsical take on the manservant or butler role. Centuries ago, the manservant was usually the head servant of a household who oversaw the wine cellar, pantry and dining room. Other manservants served as valets (personal attendants) and footmen, who ran errands and did chores. New World Duties Today thousands of butlers working at private homes, resorts and luxury hotels provide services that combine Old and New World flair. Salaries can range from $85,000 to $150,000, although some command more depending on the client’s needs including the number of homes they own. While butlers on television and in films are males, women are working in the field, as well. “There is still demand for the traditional butler who will pack and unpack clothes, greet guests and make sure the household is running smoothly,” said Robert Wynne Perry, founder and chief executive officer of Society Staffing, which includes Society Butler. “But today’s butler must also be tech-savvy and prepared to travel at a moment’s notice.” The boutique placement firm provides male and female butlers worldwide. “The function of the modern-day butler has evolved to encompass skills that help look after every aspect of a client’s busy personal and professional life,” Perry said. “Clients are looking for butlers who can quickly switch gears and deal with lots of situations all at once.” The modern butler, for example, is less likely to be polishing silver than to be overseeing an interior design project or assisting with the purchase of a new yacht.” Job duties have morphed over the years with some butlers now called estate managers or household managers and many serving as executive personal assistants, said Perry. Special Skills Multi-lingual and traveling butlers who can serve as concierges are in great demand. “The travelling butler is the ultimate support tool when on the road for business or pleasure,” said Perry. “They’re familiar with the culture and know how to get things done to make sure their employers have a smooth stay.” Clients are also looking for tech-savvy butlers who stay abreast of the latest software and security systems. “Butlers must have a strong knowledge of technology, whether they’re called upon to download pictures of the family or keep a smart home running seamlessly,” said Perry. Discretion is a paramount job requirement. “A lot of it is common sense,” said Perry, whose firm requires applicants to sign confidentiality agreements. Many families require staff to sign an additional confidentiality agreement, he said. For A Little Fantasy... For those intrigued by the word manservant, Manservants rents out gentlemen to treat women (and some men) “like a queen. The three-year-old company is as much about fantasy as service, although its website is clear that its manservants are not strippers. Manservants follow a “code of modern-day chivalry” that consists of 12 rules. They include responding with “As you wish,” addressing women with “My lady,” and “paying a compliment every quarter hour.” According to the Manservants’ website, manservants must also ensure the client “rides home safely, whether that is in a taxi, horse and carriage, or on piggyback.” Yet manservants may also perform more mundane tasks, including serving food and drinks at functions. Rates for a manservant start at $125 an hour up to $475 for a half-day (four hours). “Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one,” the company’s website says. The new STARZ Original Series “Blunt Talk,” created by Jonathan Ames and Executive Produced by Seth McFarlane, stars Patrick Stewart as a British import intent on conquering the world of American cable news. Don’t miss the premiere of the half-hour scripted comedy, Saturday, August 22 at 9P only on STARZFrom Batman’s Alfred Pennyworth to “Downton Abbey’s” Charles Carson, media’s portrayal of the manservant -- or butler as it is more commonly known -- has ranged from the absurd to the realistic. Now a new manservant is playing an important role in the Starz show “Blunt Talk,” starring Patrick Stewart as British expatriate Walter Blunt, a charismatic but self-destructive American news host. Blunt relies on his manservant, Harry, to help him navigate his messy personal and professional life. The term “manservant” may sound like a quant vestige of a long-ago age. The term butler – or occasionally house manager -- is more widely used and preferred because it sounds less demeaning, say domestic help firms. Regardless of the name, the demand for such jobs is strong enough to keep a number of schools busy training candidates. Among them are the Australian Butler School and The International Butler Academy in The Netherlands. They place students in positions worldwide. A three-year-old, San Francisco company, Manservants offers a whimsical take on the manservant or butler role. Centuries ago, the manservant was usually the head servant of a household who oversaw the wine cellar, pantry and dining room. Other manservants served as valets (personal attendants) and footmen, who ran errands and did chores. New World Duties Today thousands of butlers working at private homes, resorts and luxury hotels provide services that combine Old and New World flair. Salaries can range from $85,000 to $150,000, although some command more depending on the client’s needs including the number of homes they own. While butlers on television and in films are males, women are working in the field, as well. “There is still demand for the traditional butler who will pack and unpack clothes, greet guests and make sure the household is running smoothly,” said Robert Wynne Perry, founder and chief executive officer of Society Staffing, which includes Society Butler. “But today’s butler must also be tech-savvy and prepared to travel at a moment’s notice.” The boutique placement firm provides male and female butlers worldwide. “The function of the modern-day butler has evolved to encompass skills that help look after every aspect of a client’s busy personal and professional life,” Perry said. “Clients are looking for butlers who can quickly switch gears and deal with lots of situations all at once.” The modern butler, for example, is less likely to be polishing silver than to be overseeing an interior design project or assisting with the purchase of a new yacht.” Job duties have morphed over the years with some butlers now called estate managers or household managers and many serving as executive personal assistants, said Perry. Special Skills Multi-lingual and traveling butlers who can serve as concierges are in great demand. “The travelling butler is the ultimate support tool when on the road for business or pleasure,” said Perry. “They’re familiar with the culture and know how to get things done to make sure their employers have a smooth stay.” Clients are also looking for tech-savvy butlers who stay abreast of the latest software and security systems. “Butlers must have a strong knowledge of technology, whether they’re called upon to download pictures of the family or keep a smart home running seamlessly,” said Perry. Discretion is a paramount job requirement. “A lot of it is common sense,” said Perry, whose firm requires applicants to sign confidentiality agreements. Many families require staff to sign an additional confidentiality agreement, he said. For A Little Fantasy... For those intrigued by the word manservant, Manservants rents out gentlemen to treat women (and some men) “like a queen. The three-year-old company is as much about fantasy as service, although its website is clear that its manservants are not strippers. Manservants follow a “code of modern-day chivalry” that consists of 12 rules. They include responding with “As you wish,” addressing women with “My lady,” and “paying a compliment every quarter hour.” According to the Manservants’ website, manservants must also ensure the client “rides home safely, whether that is in a taxi, horse and carriage, or on piggyback.” Yet manservants may also perform more mundane tasks, including serving food and drinks at functions. Rates for a manservant start at $125 an hour up to $475 for a half-day (four hours). “Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one,” the company’s website says. The new STARZ Original Series “Blunt Talk,” created by Jonathan Ames and Executive Produced by Seth McFarlane, stars Patrick Stewart as a British import intent on conquering the world of American cable news. Don’t miss the premiere of the half-hour scripted comedy, Saturday, August 22 at 9P only on STARZFrom Batman’s Alfred Pennyworth to “Downton Abbey’s” Charles Carson, media’s portrayal of the manservant -- or butler as it is more commonly known -- has ranged from the absurd to the realistic. Now a new manservant is playing an important role in the Starz show “Blunt Talk,” starring Patrick Stewart as British expatriate Walter Blunt, a charismatic but self-destructive American news host. Blunt relies on his manservant, Harry, to help him navigate his messy personal and professional life. The term “manservant” may sound like a quant vestige of a long-ago age. The term butler – or occasionally house manager -- is more widely used and preferred because it sounds less demeaning, say domestic help firms. Regardless of the name, the demand for such jobs is strong enough to keep a number of schools busy training candidates. Among them are the Australian Butler School and The International Butler Academy in The Netherlands. They place students in positions worldwide. A three-year-old, San Francisco company, Manservants offers a whimsical take on the manservant or butler role. Centuries ago, the manservant was usually the head servant of a household who oversaw the wine cellar, pantry and dining room. Other manservants served as valets (personal attendants) and footmen, who ran errands and did chores. New World Duties Today thousands of butlers working at private homes, resorts and luxury hotels provide services that combine Old and New World flair. Salaries can range from $85,000 to $150,000, although some command more depending on the client’s needs including the number of homes they own. While butlers on television and in films are males, women are working in the field, as well. “There is still demand for the traditional butler who will pack and unpack clothes, greet guests and make sure the household is running smoothly,” said Robert Wynne Perry, founder and chief executive officer of Society Staffing, which includes Society Butler. “But today’s butler must also be tech-savvy and prepared to travel at a moment’s notice.” The boutique placement firm provides male and female butlers worldwide. “The function of the modern-day butler has evolved to encompass skills that help look after every aspect of a client’s busy personal and professional life,” Perry said. “Clients are looking for butlers who can quickly switch gears and deal with lots of situations all at once.” The modern butler, for example, is less likely to be polishing silver than to be overseeing an interior design project or assisting with the purchase of a new yacht.” Job duties have morphed over the years with some butlers now called estate managers or household managers and many serving as executive personal assistants, said Perry. Special Skills Multi-lingual and traveling butlers who can serve as concierges are in great demand. “The travelling butler is the ultimate support tool when on the road for business or pleasure,” said Perry. “They’re familiar with the culture and know how to get things done to make sure their employers have a smooth stay.” Clients are also looking for tech-savvy butlers who stay abreast of the latest software and security systems. “Butlers must have a strong knowledge of technology, whether they’re called upon to download pictures of the family or keep a smart home running seamlessly,” said Perry. Discretion is a paramount job requirement. “A lot of it is common sense,” said Perry, whose firm requires applicants to sign confidentiality agreements. Many families require staff to sign an additional confidentiality agreement, he said. For A Little Fantasy... For those intrigued by the word manservant, Manservants rents out gentlemen to treat women (and some men) “like a queen. The three-year-old company is as much about fantasy as service, although its website is clear that its manservants are not strippers. Manservants follow a “code of modern-day chivalry” that consists of 12 rules. They include responding with “As you wish,” addressing women with “My lady,” and “paying a compliment every quarter hour.” According to the Manservants’ website, manservants must also ensure the client “rides home safely, whether that is in a taxi, horse and carriage, or on piggyback.” Yet manservants may also perform more mundane tasks, including serving food and drinks at functions. Rates for a manservant start at $125 an hour up to $475 for a half-day (four hours). “Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one,” the company’s website says. The new STARZ Original Series “Blunt Talk,” created by Jonathan Ames and Executive Produced by Seth McFarlane, stars Patrick Stewart as a British import intent on conquering the world of American cable news. Don’t miss the premiere of the half-hour scripted comedy, Saturday, August 22 at 9P only on STARZ
August 17, 2015
So, college “p.c. culture” stifles comedy? Ever hear a comedian sh*t on the American Dream at a Wal-Mart shareholders meeting?
So lately I’ve had people passing around this article by Caitlin Flanagan about the p.c. police ruining campus comedy, which appears to be stage one of a one-two punch from the Atlantic about how p.c.-ness is ruining college in general, with the haymaker being Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s magnum opus about how p.c. culture is somehow not only killing academic discourse but also infecting us all with mental illness. Well. That’s a lot to take in. Let me start with the comedy bit. Flanagan is not talking about all comedy performances on college campuses. She’s specifically talking about gigs paid for by student-activities committees out of common funds that students have no choice but to pay into along with their tuition. (In my long-ago college days I remember that drunkenly bitching “My student-activities fee paid for this?!” was a common refrain at campus events, sometimes before the event even started.) She’s talking about gigs that pay $1,000 a pop, which, as she acknowledges, is a big deal in the world of stand-up comedy in any venue. This isn’t a “normal” gig, in other words, it’s an institutional gig. You’re not playing to an audience of paying customers who’ve been warned--caveat emptor--that the $10 cover you’re putting down for a night’s entertainment might piss you off. You’re being approved by a committee that’s been entrusted with other people’s money in order to provide entertainment for an entire organization. You’re being guaranteed a more-or-less captive audience--these large-scale student events are always well-attended since they’re generally available at low or no cost to students and preempt any other scheduled events for the evening--and a big fat check. In return, you sacrifice a lot of the creative freedom that comes from running your own show and charging tickets for it. This ought not be news to anyone who works in entertainment. It’s pretty standard, and even 10 years ago when I was in college the comedy geeks all knew and expected that officially sanctioned campus events would be less edgy and exciting than the student-run open mics and improv shows that constituted the bulk of our weekend entertainment. Indeed, that’s the reason our one “large-scale event” every year was usually a musical act and not a comedy act, because music was more of a universal crowd-pleaser than comedy. Flanagan correctly notes that campuses being a paying venue for stand-up comedy at all is a relatively recent phenomenon, one that is itself a result of campuses marketing themselves as “all-inclusive resorts” and bulking up their “student activities funds” to keep students happy--something she seems to paradoxically decry even as she laments the comics who aren’t getting that student-activities money. Well, look. At one point in time I performed improv regularly and aspired to be a stand-up comic. I went to all the requisite classes and workshops. I had one coach I really liked because he was very blunt about treating your performing career as a business and being well aware that the legendarily successful comics who were “hard to work with” were an exception, not a rule. He talked a lot about how comedians more than any other artist must not just be aware of their audience but neurotically obsessed with their audience--making people laugh is the hardest emotion to elicit from an audience, and it’s a binary thing, you either succeed or you fail. Unlike other actors or speakers, stand-up comics must tape their sets and listen to them over and over again, gauging the reaction of the crowd from moment to moment. A stand-up comic who genuinely does not give a fuck what people think is a stand-up comic who stops getting booked for shows. And you know what his advice was? If you can “clean up” your act and still keep it authentic, alive and fresh, you should do it, because pissing people off is bad for business. Many people can’t clean up their act and still be funny, of course, which means they’ll make less money than the people who can. That’s unfortunately how business works. And the place he said to go if you really wanted to make a career of it? Not comedy clubs, where the pay even for comics who bring down the house is generally pitiful and the chance of being abused by drunk hecklers is high. Not colleges, either, which are cushy institutional gigs if you can get them but where the slots are limited and competition is fierce, as Flanagan observed at her NACA conference. No, the place to get the big bucks is the motivational corporate speaking circuit. Get booked at corporate “leadership” conferences, or “networking” events, or the corporate “retreats” given out as rewards to a company’s top-performing executives. Those people command fees of multiple thousands per gig, making the $1,000 purse for a campus gig seem paltry. And if you can come off as credibly inspirational or positive about whatever the company’s business is, you don’t even have to be all that funny, as long as people leave feeling good. Let’s recap Flanagan’s horror at the “herd opinions” that campus comics must bow to--that campus comics can’t make overtly sexist, racist or anti-gay jokes, that their jokes have to be safe, inclusive jokes about “Costco, camping, and pets,” and that being a gay dude who jokes about sassy black women--something some black women are legitimately pissed off by--gets you “only” 18 offers for a gig as opposed to the 40 or 50 you “deserve.” Well, the corporate speaking set has pretty much the same rules, only you trade a certain leeway when it comes to sexist humor--not much leeway, since HR departments are as lawsuit-averse as campus administrations--for adding the requirement that you also can’t bad-mouth capitalism, business or the general concept of working hard to achieve the American Dream. Right-wing media has been having a freakout over a handout (a handout freakout, or HOFO) at a University of California faculty training session describing “meritocracy” as an un-p.c. term, seeing this as part of the unrelenting academic assault on freedom. I find it very hard to see it as anything but one very small counterattack against the much larger “real-world” p.c. culture where you’re not allowed to say anything against “meritocracy.” I can’t help seeing all this hand-wringing over campus culture as coming from people who are mentally and emotionally stuck on campus--without seeing the degree to which “campus culture” is just a reaction against this “real world” they speak so highly of. I’ll speak from my own experience. I did do my time at the extremely left-wing Swarthmore College, “the Kremlin on the Crum,” as they call it, where the handful of officially sanctioned student events every year were predictably inoffensively anodyne, though that didn’t stop them from booking a local stand-up comic who inspired a mass walkout due to an endless onslaught of Monica Lewinsky jokes. (Whether this was because they were offensively sexist or offensively unfunny, I don’t personally know, although he was telling these jokes in fucking 2005.) I also heard a lot more jokes from student comics, improv troupes and uncategorizable open-mic performance artists, many of which were quite outrageously “offensive” (graphic violence, graphic depictions of rape, liberal use of slurs, etc.) even though they all came from the same kind of incoherently rebellious campus left perspective. Some of them were really funny, though none of them were particularly liberatory or profound, any more than your typical comedy club’s litany of jokes about alcoholism and oral sex are. But then I graduated, had a bunch of adventures in the working world and, for a time, found myself doing “business development” for a small IT company, a job for which I was direly unqualified. I spent a great deal of time in this position attending lots and lots and lots of corporate events--Chamber of Commerce events, tech-centric “disruption” events, Networking for Good fundraisers. I got a lot of free meals out of my company expense account in return for almost no success at developing actual business contacts, but I consider myself karmically justified because I have never had to sit through so many direly boring and unfunny speakers in my life. I spent a year listening to speakers billed as “funny” and “entertaining” who made those boring campus entertainers seem like George Carlin. And everything was not only obnoxiously “p.c.” but also obnoxiously pollyannaish and optimistic--any joke that might come off as cynical or subversive was off-limits. Every speaker, no matter how they varied their jokes to play to an audience of Young Millennial Tech Brats or Grizzled Commercial Real Estate Development Veterans or African-American Owners of Independent Dental Practices, hewed to the same “You Are Responsible for Your Success” script as faithfully as pastors to the Bible. To me, this is the real “p.c.”--literally what is “politically correct” to say in America, what you have to say to get on the good side of the politically powerful regardless of its truth. This other “p.c.” everyone talks about is just a weak attempt to oppose it -- which just as often gets co-opted or absorbed by it. George Carlin would be banned from both the campus and the corporate comedy circuit not just for his “Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd” joke but for his loud, vicious denunciation of the U.S. as mass-murdering brown people. Even if you somehow “cleaned up” the act of one of my favorite and foulest comics, Rick Shapiro, the fact that he trades in the relentless bleakness of poverty—“Nothing works out for anyone! I sucked dick for heroin, you will too!”--would permanently lock him out of those $5,000-a-pop “inspirational” gigs. Even at the Kremlin on the Crum you had to go to the beer-soaked student open mics to hear anything the least bit “subversive”--by which I mean fiercely anti-sexist or anti-racist as much as I mean fiercely sexist or racist, by which I mean anything fierce at all. I myself went through college a thoroughly obnoxious “anti-p.c.” gadfly, arguing with every crunchy activist and social justice crusader I met. I didn’t engage in “self-censorship” until I went around hurriedly locking all my Facebook and LiveJournal posts so none of my respectable business contacts would see my anguish about Trayvon Martin or my insomnia-fueled rants about the brutality of capitalism, because I knew there would be no vigorous debate or social media shaming if I were found out, I’d just quietly lose my job. This isn’t just about the fact that, as Scott Timberg points out, conservatives still ban far more books from libraries and curricula than liberals. It’s about how one professor coming under Title IX investigation for an article containing a veiled attack on a student is part of the “political correctness gone mad” narrative but another professor straight-up losing his job for negative tweets about Israel is not. It’s about how conservatives get to revise the AP U.S. history exam and kill a Smithsonian exhibit about the Hiroshima bombing because they both contain facts that make them uncomfortable, but this isn’t labeled as “political correctness.” It’s about how Mel Gibson kills his Hollywood career with a rambling anti-Semitic rant and Rose McGowan gets blacklisted for a single snarky tweet about sexist casting notices--but only the former is “censorious p.c. culture,” the latter is just Hollywood businessmen protecting the feelings of the people who sign their checks. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s only “p.c. gone mad” if it’s the wrong people whose feelings are being policed, the people who are “normally” in the check-signing position. I didn’t take my coach’s advice, when I got my brief window to fame and fortune by being the "Jeopardy!" guy. He called me and told me my 15 minutes of fame were the perfect vehicle to a cushy life on the corporate-speaking circuit, that if I reworked my public image enough I could make money in my sleep telling entrepreneurs and executives how to “disrupt the rules” to make big profits. It wouldn’t even really be contrary to my beliefs to do so. It would just be leaving out certain parts of my beliefs--the parts likely to step on the toes of the check-signing elites of the world. I ultimately made the other choice--I went public with my SJW beliefs, I wrote incendiary political think pieces for left-wing rags, I made myself unhirable as a cheerleader for the American Dream. I’m working the “p.c. left” college-campus-speaker diversity circuit, which, as a cursory look at any speaking-gig website will tell you, has a whole lot less money floating around it than the inspirational/corporate circuit, despite its supposed tyrannical power. The fact that people like me get shut out of the Chamber of Commerce isn’t “political correctness,” though. It’s just “the free market,” or “the way the world works,” or, as my parents would call it, “simple common sense.” Actual political correctness doesn’t get perceived as political correctness. If it’s really “politically correct” to believe something then that belief isn’t perceived at all--any more than fish perceive water. “Political correctness” is the label we put on any attempt to change what’s politically correct — "political correctness gone mad" is what we call it when that change happens too fast for our tastes. The fact is George Carlin wouldn’t have been welcome as institutionally endorsed entertainment in the 1940s, or the 1960s (the decade in which he was arrested for public profanity, the decade when the Smothers Brothers were forced off the air), or the 1980s, or the 2000s--but it’s only the 2000s-specific rape-joke critiques that are treated as a new, horrifying era of “political correctness” that must be resisted. Everything else that makes something like him controversial--and has always made someone like him controversial--is chalked up to “the way the marketplace works” and to “common sense.” You know, things we don’t question because they are politically correct. Which brings me back to the Lukianoff/Haidt piece and its insulting thesis that college campuses are incubators for mental illness and emotional fragility because they make students hypersensitive to oppression--ignoring that the entire rest of the world is a hypersensitive minefield ready to blow the fuck up when you so much as mention the concept of oppression. They inappropriately borrow the language of cognitive behavioral therapy--a practice meant to deal with personal emotional problems on an individual basis--to diagnose an entire social movement as mentally ill. So I’ll borrow their use of mental-health rhetoric and point out that what they’re doing is called gaslighting. They’re treating real, society-wide problems as though they’re just individual mental hang-ups. They’re treating the oppressive culture of “political correctness” that silences dissent and enforces conformity that we have always had as normal and sane, and treating the resistance to it--the flawed attempt to come up with new social norms that comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable instead of vice versa--as though it’s the real sickness. It’s a textbook example of the Martha Mitchell effect, of deciding you’re paranoid before even asking if they really are out to get you. It’s an unfair criticism. It’s a criticism that comes from a place of immense privilege and comfort. And it is, most of all, tiresomely and predictably politically correct.So lately I’ve had people passing around this article by Caitlin Flanagan about the p.c. police ruining campus comedy, which appears to be stage one of a one-two punch from the Atlantic about how p.c.-ness is ruining college in general, with the haymaker being Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s magnum opus about how p.c. culture is somehow not only killing academic discourse but also infecting us all with mental illness. Well. That’s a lot to take in. Let me start with the comedy bit. Flanagan is not talking about all comedy performances on college campuses. She’s specifically talking about gigs paid for by student-activities committees out of common funds that students have no choice but to pay into along with their tuition. (In my long-ago college days I remember that drunkenly bitching “My student-activities fee paid for this?!” was a common refrain at campus events, sometimes before the event even started.) She’s talking about gigs that pay $1,000 a pop, which, as she acknowledges, is a big deal in the world of stand-up comedy in any venue. This isn’t a “normal” gig, in other words, it’s an institutional gig. You’re not playing to an audience of paying customers who’ve been warned--caveat emptor--that the $10 cover you’re putting down for a night’s entertainment might piss you off. You’re being approved by a committee that’s been entrusted with other people’s money in order to provide entertainment for an entire organization. You’re being guaranteed a more-or-less captive audience--these large-scale student events are always well-attended since they’re generally available at low or no cost to students and preempt any other scheduled events for the evening--and a big fat check. In return, you sacrifice a lot of the creative freedom that comes from running your own show and charging tickets for it. This ought not be news to anyone who works in entertainment. It’s pretty standard, and even 10 years ago when I was in college the comedy geeks all knew and expected that officially sanctioned campus events would be less edgy and exciting than the student-run open mics and improv shows that constituted the bulk of our weekend entertainment. Indeed, that’s the reason our one “large-scale event” every year was usually a musical act and not a comedy act, because music was more of a universal crowd-pleaser than comedy. Flanagan correctly notes that campuses being a paying venue for stand-up comedy at all is a relatively recent phenomenon, one that is itself a result of campuses marketing themselves as “all-inclusive resorts” and bulking up their “student activities funds” to keep students happy--something she seems to paradoxically decry even as she laments the comics who aren’t getting that student-activities money. Well, look. At one point in time I performed improv regularly and aspired to be a stand-up comic. I went to all the requisite classes and workshops. I had one coach I really liked because he was very blunt about treating your performing career as a business and being well aware that the legendarily successful comics who were “hard to work with” were an exception, not a rule. He talked a lot about how comedians more than any other artist must not just be aware of their audience but neurotically obsessed with their audience--making people laugh is the hardest emotion to elicit from an audience, and it’s a binary thing, you either succeed or you fail. Unlike other actors or speakers, stand-up comics must tape their sets and listen to them over and over again, gauging the reaction of the crowd from moment to moment. A stand-up comic who genuinely does not give a fuck what people think is a stand-up comic who stops getting booked for shows. And you know what his advice was? If you can “clean up” your act and still keep it authentic, alive and fresh, you should do it, because pissing people off is bad for business. Many people can’t clean up their act and still be funny, of course, which means they’ll make less money than the people who can. That’s unfortunately how business works. And the place he said to go if you really wanted to make a career of it? Not comedy clubs, where the pay even for comics who bring down the house is generally pitiful and the chance of being abused by drunk hecklers is high. Not colleges, either, which are cushy institutional gigs if you can get them but where the slots are limited and competition is fierce, as Flanagan observed at her NACA conference. No, the place to get the big bucks is the motivational corporate speaking circuit. Get booked at corporate “leadership” conferences, or “networking” events, or the corporate “retreats” given out as rewards to a company’s top-performing executives. Those people command fees of multiple thousands per gig, making the $1,000 purse for a campus gig seem paltry. And if you can come off as credibly inspirational or positive about whatever the company’s business is, you don’t even have to be all that funny, as long as people leave feeling good. Let’s recap Flanagan’s horror at the “herd opinions” that campus comics must bow to--that campus comics can’t make overtly sexist, racist or anti-gay jokes, that their jokes have to be safe, inclusive jokes about “Costco, camping, and pets,” and that being a gay dude who jokes about sassy black women--something some black women are legitimately pissed off by--gets you “only” 18 offers for a gig as opposed to the 40 or 50 you “deserve.” Well, the corporate speaking set has pretty much the same rules, only you trade a certain leeway when it comes to sexist humor--not much leeway, since HR departments are as lawsuit-averse as campus administrations--for adding the requirement that you also can’t bad-mouth capitalism, business or the general concept of working hard to achieve the American Dream. Right-wing media has been having a freakout over a handout (a handout freakout, or HOFO) at a University of California faculty training session describing “meritocracy” as an un-p.c. term, seeing this as part of the unrelenting academic assault on freedom. I find it very hard to see it as anything but one very small counterattack against the much larger “real-world” p.c. culture where you’re not allowed to say anything against “meritocracy.” I can’t help seeing all this hand-wringing over campus culture as coming from people who are mentally and emotionally stuck on campus--without seeing the degree to which “campus culture” is just a reaction against this “real world” they speak so highly of. I’ll speak from my own experience. I did do my time at the extremely left-wing Swarthmore College, “the Kremlin on the Crum,” as they call it, where the handful of officially sanctioned student events every year were predictably inoffensively anodyne, though that didn’t stop them from booking a local stand-up comic who inspired a mass walkout due to an endless onslaught of Monica Lewinsky jokes. (Whether this was because they were offensively sexist or offensively unfunny, I don’t personally know, although he was telling these jokes in fucking 2005.) I also heard a lot more jokes from student comics, improv troupes and uncategorizable open-mic performance artists, many of which were quite outrageously “offensive” (graphic violence, graphic depictions of rape, liberal use of slurs, etc.) even though they all came from the same kind of incoherently rebellious campus left perspective. Some of them were really funny, though none of them were particularly liberatory or profound, any more than your typical comedy club’s litany of jokes about alcoholism and oral sex are. But then I graduated, had a bunch of adventures in the working world and, for a time, found myself doing “business development” for a small IT company, a job for which I was direly unqualified. I spent a great deal of time in this position attending lots and lots and lots of corporate events--Chamber of Commerce events, tech-centric “disruption” events, Networking for Good fundraisers. I got a lot of free meals out of my company expense account in return for almost no success at developing actual business contacts, but I consider myself karmically justified because I have never had to sit through so many direly boring and unfunny speakers in my life. I spent a year listening to speakers billed as “funny” and “entertaining” who made those boring campus entertainers seem like George Carlin. And everything was not only obnoxiously “p.c.” but also obnoxiously pollyannaish and optimistic--any joke that might come off as cynical or subversive was off-limits. Every speaker, no matter how they varied their jokes to play to an audience of Young Millennial Tech Brats or Grizzled Commercial Real Estate Development Veterans or African-American Owners of Independent Dental Practices, hewed to the same “You Are Responsible for Your Success” script as faithfully as pastors to the Bible. To me, this is the real “p.c.”--literally what is “politically correct” to say in America, what you have to say to get on the good side of the politically powerful regardless of its truth. This other “p.c.” everyone talks about is just a weak attempt to oppose it -- which just as often gets co-opted or absorbed by it. George Carlin would be banned from both the campus and the corporate comedy circuit not just for his “Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd” joke but for his loud, vicious denunciation of the U.S. as mass-murdering brown people. Even if you somehow “cleaned up” the act of one of my favorite and foulest comics, Rick Shapiro, the fact that he trades in the relentless bleakness of poverty—“Nothing works out for anyone! I sucked dick for heroin, you will too!”--would permanently lock him out of those $5,000-a-pop “inspirational” gigs. Even at the Kremlin on the Crum you had to go to the beer-soaked student open mics to hear anything the least bit “subversive”--by which I mean fiercely anti-sexist or anti-racist as much as I mean fiercely sexist or racist, by which I mean anything fierce at all. I myself went through college a thoroughly obnoxious “anti-p.c.” gadfly, arguing with every crunchy activist and social justice crusader I met. I didn’t engage in “self-censorship” until I went around hurriedly locking all my Facebook and LiveJournal posts so none of my respectable business contacts would see my anguish about Trayvon Martin or my insomnia-fueled rants about the brutality of capitalism, because I knew there would be no vigorous debate or social media shaming if I were found out, I’d just quietly lose my job. This isn’t just about the fact that, as Scott Timberg points out, conservatives still ban far more books from libraries and curricula than liberals. It’s about how one professor coming under Title IX investigation for an article containing a veiled attack on a student is part of the “political correctness gone mad” narrative but another professor straight-up losing his job for negative tweets about Israel is not. It’s about how conservatives get to revise the AP U.S. history exam and kill a Smithsonian exhibit about the Hiroshima bombing because they both contain facts that make them uncomfortable, but this isn’t labeled as “political correctness.” It’s about how Mel Gibson kills his Hollywood career with a rambling anti-Semitic rant and Rose McGowan gets blacklisted for a single snarky tweet about sexist casting notices--but only the former is “censorious p.c. culture,” the latter is just Hollywood businessmen protecting the feelings of the people who sign their checks. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s only “p.c. gone mad” if it’s the wrong people whose feelings are being policed, the people who are “normally” in the check-signing position. I didn’t take my coach’s advice, when I got my brief window to fame and fortune by being the "Jeopardy!" guy. He called me and told me my 15 minutes of fame were the perfect vehicle to a cushy life on the corporate-speaking circuit, that if I reworked my public image enough I could make money in my sleep telling entrepreneurs and executives how to “disrupt the rules” to make big profits. It wouldn’t even really be contrary to my beliefs to do so. It would just be leaving out certain parts of my beliefs--the parts likely to step on the toes of the check-signing elites of the world. I ultimately made the other choice--I went public with my SJW beliefs, I wrote incendiary political think pieces for left-wing rags, I made myself unhirable as a cheerleader for the American Dream. I’m working the “p.c. left” college-campus-speaker diversity circuit, which, as a cursory look at any speaking-gig website will tell you, has a whole lot less money floating around it than the inspirational/corporate circuit, despite its supposed tyrannical power. The fact that people like me get shut out of the Chamber of Commerce isn’t “political correctness,” though. It’s just “the free market,” or “the way the world works,” or, as my parents would call it, “simple common sense.” Actual political correctness doesn’t get perceived as political correctness. If it’s really “politically correct” to believe something then that belief isn’t perceived at all--any more than fish perceive water. “Political correctness” is the label we put on any attempt to change what’s politically correct — "political correctness gone mad" is what we call it when that change happens too fast for our tastes. The fact is George Carlin wouldn’t have been welcome as institutionally endorsed entertainment in the 1940s, or the 1960s (the decade in which he was arrested for public profanity, the decade when the Smothers Brothers were forced off the air), or the 1980s, or the 2000s--but it’s only the 2000s-specific rape-joke critiques that are treated as a new, horrifying era of “political correctness” that must be resisted. Everything else that makes something like him controversial--and has always made someone like him controversial--is chalked up to “the way the marketplace works” and to “common sense.” You know, things we don’t question because they are politically correct. Which brings me back to the Lukianoff/Haidt piece and its insulting thesis that college campuses are incubators for mental illness and emotional fragility because they make students hypersensitive to oppression--ignoring that the entire rest of the world is a hypersensitive minefield ready to blow the fuck up when you so much as mention the concept of oppression. They inappropriately borrow the language of cognitive behavioral therapy--a practice meant to deal with personal emotional problems on an individual basis--to diagnose an entire social movement as mentally ill. So I’ll borrow their use of mental-health rhetoric and point out that what they’re doing is called gaslighting. They’re treating real, society-wide problems as though they’re just individual mental hang-ups. They’re treating the oppressive culture of “political correctness” that silences dissent and enforces conformity that we have always had as normal and sane, and treating the resistance to it--the flawed attempt to come up with new social norms that comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable instead of vice versa--as though it’s the real sickness. It’s a textbook example of the Martha Mitchell effect, of deciding you’re paranoid before even asking if they really are out to get you. It’s an unfair criticism. It’s a criticism that comes from a place of immense privilege and comfort. And it is, most of all, tiresomely and predictably politically correct.
Paul Haggis on “Show Me a Hero” and bringing the politics of fear to life: “That’s still what we do all the time. It’s how politics is practiced in America”
Now that you’ve (hopefully) watched the first two hours of HBO’s “Show Me a Hero,” which debuted last night, let’s talk about the way the show looks. When you’re making a story about public housing based on a nonfiction book, the visuals are going to be crucial toward making the show feel like TV, not a textbook. Enter director Paul Haggis, the Academy Award-winning writer behind two back-to-back best pictures: “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” which he also directed. “Show Me a Hero” is his first project that he’s coming to solely as a director, based purely on the pedigree of David Simon, and as I said in my review of the miniseries, it might be his best work yet. Simon and co-writer William F. Zorzi’s bureaucratic and detail-oriented sensibility is complemented by Haggis’ cinematic intimacy, making for a lived-in and involved six hours. I spoke to Haggis about how he created the visual element of “Show Me a Hero”—who would have guessed sourcing the mid-range cars from the late 1980s would have been one of the hardest parts?
Note:
I get into some of the details of the first two episodes with Haggis — so fair warning, if you haven't yet watched — as well as discussing the framing device in the first episode, but at his request I have not revealed the (historically accurate) ending of “Show Me a Hero.” How did you come to this project? I was in England and prepping a movie that was going to go, and the actor I wanted wasn’t available for a year, so we pushed. So I had nothing to do. I called my representation and they said, “Look, we have a bunch of interest, some features we want you to direct.” They started going down the list, and they got to No. 3 and said, “Oh, David Simon has a miniseries.” I said, “Stop there. Say yes.” They said, “Great, we’ll send you the script, and we’ll discuss.” I said: “No. Say yes, and then send me the script.” They thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t, because I’m a huge fan of his, always have been. “The Wire” is one of my favorite series of all time. And, you know, his work from “The Corner” and “Treme” and “Generation Kill,” all series I watched and loved. Then I read the script before meeting him. Luckily, it was something I had a great interest in because it was talking about what I like to talk about: the fact that this wasn’t the civil rights battle in the '60s. This is a civil rights battle in the north, in 1990. It’s not those bad people down there. It’s us here in New York. I’m a New Yorker now. And it’s those small decisions, of the “Not in my backyard” mentality. Oh yes. There’s literally that line in one of the episodes: "I’m not going to have that in my backyard ... It is literally in my backyard." I’m not doing it, it’s in my backyard. On reading it, I could empathize with every single one of the characters on the screen. Because even those who were cast as villains in this had a really good point. I mean, you look at Schlobohm. You look at those towers, especially in that period. Do you really want that in your street? I don’t. I know it’s not a matter of race. I know no affluent African-American or Hispanic family would want that on their street. So that wasn’t a race issue, it was a class issue. There’s also an issue about the way we had mismanaged public housing from the beginning and how we continue to mismanage it, and how we just love to take problems and just shove them someplace and go, “Oh, they’re solved. All those people, we’re just going to warehouse them over there, and that’s solved.” And it’s not. There’s a bureaucrat in this—Oscar Newman, played by Peter Riegert, with the long beard. He’s the only one who’s battling. He’s a bureaucrat, and he’s battling the left, he’s battling the right, he’s battling the NAACP. He’s battling HUD, he’s battling everybody—because he wants a solution that actually works. He doesn’t just want the easy solution. We just want easy solutions in this country. In Yonkers, they finally constructed housing that works for low-income families. But the fear-mongering, the hatred, everything that came out of that — it was stunning to see that actually happen, and to re-create that was something that I thought would be tremendously difficult. I like doing tremendously difficult things. At first glance, zoning doesn’t seem like such a dynamic and political thing, but it is. How do you make that happen visually? What were the motifs or sets that you would fall to? Early on, they gave me the script. Dave and Bill gave me a script that’s basically all true, even if some of the characters are combined, or whatever. It’s all true; everything happened. My job is to make it feel true. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that, how to make you feel like you were in that crowd. I said early on to David [Simon, executive producer and writer] and Nina [Kostroff-Noble, executive producer], “There’s not going to be a perfect frame in this. I’m going to find imperfection and drag it into every single frame.” If you’re in a crowd, and you’re trying to get a glimpse of the mayor, there will be two people standing in front of you, and somebody with a big hat. And if you’re looking at somebody in a close-up, there will be a microphone in the wrong place. You’ll see later in a scene with Alfred Molina [who plays city councilor Henry Spallone], there’s a pole right in his face. That’s not an accident. I moved the camera to make sure that the pole was right in his face, so that you feel like you’re a participant in this. If you feel like that, two things will happen. One is you’ll feel real. Two, you will be able to see these people with all their flaws, because the flaws are evident in the frame. If you do that, you’ll be able to empathize. You’ll be able to say, “Yeah, that’s sort of me. I sort of feel that.” And that’s what I’ve always wanted to do in my dramas: to make you empathize with people that you don’t want to empathize with and challenge your beliefs, on the left and on the right. Many decisions that the left was making were just too easy. And the right was all fear-mongering. It was all trying to make our constituents fear the Other, and that’s still what we do all the time. It’s how politics is practiced in America. They appeal to our basest fears. Absolutely. Always have. And it works, and you see it working right now. You want people to go, “Can we stop? Just a second. This decision you’re making is against your best interests. You understand that, right?” But it gives you an identity to make that, to say that we should not help the poor. “OK, fine, that’s other people. But we should certainly not have public healthcare, even though my daughter is sick and might need it and my wife has bad teeth — but no, that would be bad because that’s socialism and we’re not socialists.” Then, you go, “OK, let’s just apply a little common sense to this, rather than the demagoguery.” [“Show Me a Hero”] is about really flawed human beings. The central character is an opportunist. He’s just a guy who wants to be the mayor. Why? Because he wants to be the mayor. He’s not even a racist. Right! He’s just like, “Oh, I can win on this. OK, yeah, fine. I just want to win — I don’t really care why.” That original sin is what is going to damn him. That personality flaw, so that as he turns and as he champions this, everything comes at a cost to him. His own ego is frail. He’s so human, it makes this story and his bravery, I guess, that much more brave. He had to fight his own demons as well as those that surrounded him. What was the decision behind starting the miniseries with Nick Wasicsko at his father’s grave, in 1993, and then jumping back to 1987? Just a dramatic device that David and Bill [William F. Zorzi, writer] came up with. I wanted to keep the audience off balance. I wanted to give them a sense that something might not be good here. Exactly what? We’re not sure. Even at the end, I think you’re not sure. I like to keep the audience guessing. There’s something beautifully understated about your cast. I didn’t even realize Vinni Restiano was Winona Ryder at first. She’s just droning on! People talking about zoning, parking regulations, and that’s how she’s introduced. They do a great job of blending into the surroundings. And yet, as you see going on, it’s really fascinating to see that every single one of those city councilmen—every single person in this city hall is memorable in that role. They’re all specific. That’s a great testament to those actors, who did their research, who watched the tapes of their counterparts, who brought their own suggestions about how to do this thing. And they all found their own idiosyncrasies. It was wonderful, a very talented group of actors. What was your favorite scene? I loved the city hall scenes in episode two, when all hell has broken loose—and finding a way to shoot it so that you felt like you were there and you were a part of it. Shooting behind a lot of people, and having my cameras behind people, having people block us, not being able to see, having to poke around, having a lot of foreground so you felt that you were part of it. The frame was always imperfect in some way so that it talked about who these characters were: These imperfect people who were trying to serve in some way. Yonkers is this very unglamorous location. What was it like filming there? It was great. As much as we could, we shot in the actual location. Some had changed. Some places we couldn’t. For instance, my production designer, Larry Bennett, had to go through, and we had to create a lot of the city offices. We had to build one of the tenements. We had to build one of the apartments inside Schlobohm because we couldn’t go in and kick all the people out of their homes to shoot. The offices at City Hall had changed radically—they’d been renovated. But we did shoot in the city council chamber. We did shoot in the corridors. Everything was the same; we made it a point. Mary Dorman’s house was Mary Dorman’s house. That was very important to all of us: to feel what they were feeling at the time and to put our actors in real locations. You want to understand how small Mary Dorman’s house was. It’s a little brick house on a nice little street, and she was trying to protect that little brick house on the nice little street. It was important. Of course, it was really impossible to shoot. It was so tiny. But it made you feel that her life is not that dissimilar from those who are in public housing, who just want to have that. Just a little house someplace. Is there an inherent challenge in doing a period piece, or something that’s not a very glamorous period piece? Yes, it’s much harder than you expect. People did not keep their cars from 1987. You’ve got to find them all, and the people who did keep their cars, they kept Cadillacs. [Laughs.] It was so hard finding the Gremlins or the Pintos, whatever the hell we were driving back then. The Ford Rancheros. So hard, but we had to find them. And you can’t just walk out into the street and shoot. We had to shoot this very quickly. In a normal movie, you shoot maybe one to three pages a day. This, we were shooting between six and 10 pages a day. That was a struggle. We had to shoot very quickly. A lot of locations. Over 40 speaking roles, and make it all feel real. [We had to] shoot really fast. Make decisions very quickly—how you’re going to do it—and stick to it. You’ve had the opportunity to make your own masterpieces. What’s it like going into a situation where you’re creating things on the fly? It’s great. I’ve never directed anything I haven’t written. It’s my first, ever. And I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn. It’s a great challenge to go in with someone else’s script, and as a director you get to give notes. You’re not putting pen to paper — that’s their job. They protect that, rightfully. They’re the writers. My job is to guide that where I can, to understand it, and to try to figure out how to do it where I can’t. And to bring it to life. If there’s a scene that requires just a truckload of exposition, how do I make it sound like those people really should be saying those things to each other at that moment, even though they both know it. How do I make it sound like that? How do I make the actors understand that? If I add this little thing, try to improvise around this little bit, and then find the life in it. Bring it to life, and then shoot it in a way that it’ll feel like it’s happening right now, but not do it in a strictly verité way, and do it in a way that has a style that hopefully helps tell the story. I had to keep focusing on, “What’s the emotional arc here?” Yes, we have all this going on, but what’s actually happening underneath that? So when this vote comes down like that, what’s the emotional impact on our character. Ah, he thought he had it in his pocket. He thought he had this ally. This ally just turned him into an enemy, and I have to see that on his face. I have to understand that by just looking at it.Now that you’ve (hopefully) watched the first two hours of HBO’s “Show Me a Hero,” which debuted last night, let’s talk about the way the show looks. When you’re making a story about public housing based on a nonfiction book, the visuals are going to be crucial toward making the show feel like TV, not a textbook. Enter director Paul Haggis, the Academy Award-winning writer behind two back-to-back best pictures: “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” which he also directed. “Show Me a Hero” is his first project that he’s coming to solely as a director, based purely on the pedigree of David Simon, and as I said in my review of the miniseries, it might be his best work yet. Simon and co-writer William F. Zorzi’s bureaucratic and detail-oriented sensibility is complemented by Haggis’ cinematic intimacy, making for a lived-in and involved six hours. I spoke to Haggis about how he created the visual element of “Show Me a Hero”—who would have guessed sourcing the mid-range cars from the late 1980s would have been one of the hardest parts?
Note:
I get into some of the details of the first two episodes with Haggis — so fair warning, if you haven't yet watched — as well as discussing the framing device in the first episode, but at his request I have not revealed the (historically accurate) ending of “Show Me a Hero.” How did you come to this project? I was in England and prepping a movie that was going to go, and the actor I wanted wasn’t available for a year, so we pushed. So I had nothing to do. I called my representation and they said, “Look, we have a bunch of interest, some features we want you to direct.” They started going down the list, and they got to No. 3 and said, “Oh, David Simon has a miniseries.” I said, “Stop there. Say yes.” They said, “Great, we’ll send you the script, and we’ll discuss.” I said: “No. Say yes, and then send me the script.” They thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t, because I’m a huge fan of his, always have been. “The Wire” is one of my favorite series of all time. And, you know, his work from “The Corner” and “Treme” and “Generation Kill,” all series I watched and loved. Then I read the script before meeting him. Luckily, it was something I had a great interest in because it was talking about what I like to talk about: the fact that this wasn’t the civil rights battle in the '60s. This is a civil rights battle in the north, in 1990. It’s not those bad people down there. It’s us here in New York. I’m a New Yorker now. And it’s those small decisions, of the “Not in my backyard” mentality. Oh yes. There’s literally that line in one of the episodes: "I’m not going to have that in my backyard ... It is literally in my backyard." I’m not doing it, it’s in my backyard. On reading it, I could empathize with every single one of the characters on the screen. Because even those who were cast as villains in this had a really good point. I mean, you look at Schlobohm. You look at those towers, especially in that period. Do you really want that in your street? I don’t. I know it’s not a matter of race. I know no affluent African-American or Hispanic family would want that on their street. So that wasn’t a race issue, it was a class issue. There’s also an issue about the way we had mismanaged public housing from the beginning and how we continue to mismanage it, and how we just love to take problems and just shove them someplace and go, “Oh, they’re solved. All those people, we’re just going to warehouse them over there, and that’s solved.” And it’s not. There’s a bureaucrat in this—Oscar Newman, played by Peter Riegert, with the long beard. He’s the only one who’s battling. He’s a bureaucrat, and he’s battling the left, he’s battling the right, he’s battling the NAACP. He’s battling HUD, he’s battling everybody—because he wants a solution that actually works. He doesn’t just want the easy solution. We just want easy solutions in this country. In Yonkers, they finally constructed housing that works for low-income families. But the fear-mongering, the hatred, everything that came out of that — it was stunning to see that actually happen, and to re-create that was something that I thought would be tremendously difficult. I like doing tremendously difficult things. At first glance, zoning doesn’t seem like such a dynamic and political thing, but it is. How do you make that happen visually? What were the motifs or sets that you would fall to? Early on, they gave me the script. Dave and Bill gave me a script that’s basically all true, even if some of the characters are combined, or whatever. It’s all true; everything happened. My job is to make it feel true. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that, how to make you feel like you were in that crowd. I said early on to David [Simon, executive producer and writer] and Nina [Kostroff-Noble, executive producer], “There’s not going to be a perfect frame in this. I’m going to find imperfection and drag it into every single frame.” If you’re in a crowd, and you’re trying to get a glimpse of the mayor, there will be two people standing in front of you, and somebody with a big hat. And if you’re looking at somebody in a close-up, there will be a microphone in the wrong place. You’ll see later in a scene with Alfred Molina [who plays city councilor Henry Spallone], there’s a pole right in his face. That’s not an accident. I moved the camera to make sure that the pole was right in his face, so that you feel like you’re a participant in this. If you feel like that, two things will happen. One is you’ll feel real. Two, you will be able to see these people with all their flaws, because the flaws are evident in the frame. If you do that, you’ll be able to empathize. You’ll be able to say, “Yeah, that’s sort of me. I sort of feel that.” And that’s what I’ve always wanted to do in my dramas: to make you empathize with people that you don’t want to empathize with and challenge your beliefs, on the left and on the right. Many decisions that the left was making were just too easy. And the right was all fear-mongering. It was all trying to make our constituents fear the Other, and that’s still what we do all the time. It’s how politics is practiced in America. They appeal to our basest fears. Absolutely. Always have. And it works, and you see it working right now. You want people to go, “Can we stop? Just a second. This decision you’re making is against your best interests. You understand that, right?” But it gives you an identity to make that, to say that we should not help the poor. “OK, fine, that’s other people. But we should certainly not have public healthcare, even though my daughter is sick and might need it and my wife has bad teeth — but no, that would be bad because that’s socialism and we’re not socialists.” Then, you go, “OK, let’s just apply a little common sense to this, rather than the demagoguery.” [“Show Me a Hero”] is about really flawed human beings. The central character is an opportunist. He’s just a guy who wants to be the mayor. Why? Because he wants to be the mayor. He’s not even a racist. Right! He’s just like, “Oh, I can win on this. OK, yeah, fine. I just want to win — I don’t really care why.” That original sin is what is going to damn him. That personality flaw, so that as he turns and as he champions this, everything comes at a cost to him. His own ego is frail. He’s so human, it makes this story and his bravery, I guess, that much more brave. He had to fight his own demons as well as those that surrounded him. What was the decision behind starting the miniseries with Nick Wasicsko at his father’s grave, in 1993, and then jumping back to 1987? Just a dramatic device that David and Bill [William F. Zorzi, writer] came up with. I wanted to keep the audience off balance. I wanted to give them a sense that something might not be good here. Exactly what? We’re not sure. Even at the end, I think you’re not sure. I like to keep the audience guessing. There’s something beautifully understated about your cast. I didn’t even realize Vinni Restiano was Winona Ryder at first. She’s just droning on! People talking about zoning, parking regulations, and that’s how she’s introduced. They do a great job of blending into the surroundings. And yet, as you see going on, it’s really fascinating to see that every single one of those city councilmen—every single person in this city hall is memorable in that role. They’re all specific. That’s a great testament to those actors, who did their research, who watched the tapes of their counterparts, who brought their own suggestions about how to do this thing. And they all found their own idiosyncrasies. It was wonderful, a very talented group of actors. What was your favorite scene? I loved the city hall scenes in episode two, when all hell has broken loose—and finding a way to shoot it so that you felt like you were there and you were a part of it. Shooting behind a lot of people, and having my cameras behind people, having people block us, not being able to see, having to poke around, having a lot of foreground so you felt that you were part of it. The frame was always imperfect in some way so that it talked about who these characters were: These imperfect people who were trying to serve in some way. Yonkers is this very unglamorous location. What was it like filming there? It was great. As much as we could, we shot in the actual location. Some had changed. Some places we couldn’t. For instance, my production designer, Larry Bennett, had to go through, and we had to create a lot of the city offices. We had to build one of the tenements. We had to build one of the apartments inside Schlobohm because we couldn’t go in and kick all the people out of their homes to shoot. The offices at City Hall had changed radically—they’d been renovated. But we did shoot in the city council chamber. We did shoot in the corridors. Everything was the same; we made it a point. Mary Dorman’s house was Mary Dorman’s house. That was very important to all of us: to feel what they were feeling at the time and to put our actors in real locations. You want to understand how small Mary Dorman’s house was. It’s a little brick house on a nice little street, and she was trying to protect that little brick house on the nice little street. It was important. Of course, it was really impossible to shoot. It was so tiny. But it made you feel that her life is not that dissimilar from those who are in public housing, who just want to have that. Just a little house someplace. Is there an inherent challenge in doing a period piece, or something that’s not a very glamorous period piece? Yes, it’s much harder than you expect. People did not keep their cars from 1987. You’ve got to find them all, and the people who did keep their cars, they kept Cadillacs. [Laughs.] It was so hard finding the Gremlins or the Pintos, whatever the hell we were driving back then. The Ford Rancheros. So hard, but we had to find them. And you can’t just walk out into the street and shoot. We had to shoot this very quickly. In a normal movie, you shoot maybe one to three pages a day. This, we were shooting between six and 10 pages a day. That was a struggle. We had to shoot very quickly. A lot of locations. Over 40 speaking roles, and make it all feel real. [We had to] shoot really fast. Make decisions very quickly—how you’re going to do it—and stick to it. You’ve had the opportunity to make your own masterpieces. What’s it like going into a situation where you’re creating things on the fly? It’s great. I’ve never directed anything I haven’t written. It’s my first, ever. And I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn. It’s a great challenge to go in with someone else’s script, and as a director you get to give notes. You’re not putting pen to paper — that’s their job. They protect that, rightfully. They’re the writers. My job is to guide that where I can, to understand it, and to try to figure out how to do it where I can’t. And to bring it to life. If there’s a scene that requires just a truckload of exposition, how do I make it sound like those people really should be saying those things to each other at that moment, even though they both know it. How do I make it sound like that? How do I make the actors understand that? If I add this little thing, try to improvise around this little bit, and then find the life in it. Bring it to life, and then shoot it in a way that it’ll feel like it’s happening right now, but not do it in a strictly verité way, and do it in a way that has a style that hopefully helps tell the story. I had to keep focusing on, “What’s the emotional arc here?” Yes, we have all this going on, but what’s actually happening underneath that? So when this vote comes down like that, what’s the emotional impact on our character. Ah, he thought he had it in his pocket. He thought he had this ally. This ally just turned him into an enemy, and I have to see that on his face. I have to understand that by just looking at it.
Africa’s great awakening: Amid capitalist plunder and environmental catastrophe, a new consciousness rises
You can’t possibly summarize the history of modern Africa in 30 seconds, but the guy we hear talking at the beginning of Hubert Sauper’s film “We Come as Friends” does a pretty good job. He’s speaking in an African language very few viewers of this film will understand or recognize, but he isn’t delivering some ancient myth or village wisdom. People came from Europe and took Africa by force, he explains. They plundered its natural resources and carved up the continent into different countries with arbitrary boundaries, leaving Africans to fight among themselves. When they were done with that, they went and conquered the Moon. “Did you know,” he concludes, “that the Moon belongs to the white man?” One might respond that the Moon has pretty much been relinquished by the white man, largely because nothing of value was discovered there. But in most respects that’s a startlingly accurate account of the 20th century from Africa’s point of view. As we see in Sauper’s acrid and disturbing ground-level documentary about the creation of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, the forces that pillaged and brutalized Africa for more than 300 years have definitely not departed, although these days they find it necessary to modulate their message and wear a subtler disguise. There’s an obvious level of contradiction in a film by a white European radical that means to reflect the increasing self-awareness and political sophistication of ordinary Africans, even in conditions of endemic poverty and violence. Indeed, that contradiction is to some degree the subject of “We Come as Friends,” right down to the ruthless historical irony of its title. If some hope for the future can be discerned in a century when Africa faces multiple levels of political, economic and environmental crisis at the same time, it lies here: In our interconnected world, Africans can no longer be viewed through the West’s conventional “Heart of Darkness” prism of pity, condescension or contempt, as if they were the objects of a historical process they could not possibly understand. Even amid its unstinting portrait of the power still wielded in Africa by the twin forces of foreign capital and evangelical religion, Sauper’s film finds shreds of this hope in the unlikeliest places. Another recent film by a white European, Göran Hugo Olsson’s historical collage “Concerning Violence,” comes at the same subject from a different direction, challenging us to reconsider the true legacy of Africa’s revolutionary movements in the 1960s and ‘70s, which sought to turn colonial oppression upside down with a single stroke and were universally isolated, vilified and undermined by America and the capitalist world. Filmmakers like Olsson and Sauper have ample access to production funding and technical infrastructure, as well as the political freedom to explore controversial points of view, all of which is difficult to impossible in most African nations. Journalistic or historical films made by outsiders, no matter how carefully framed, are no substitute for Africans telling their own stories, as those two would surely agree. Given that urgent context, I would argue that the brilliant Mauritanian-born director Abderrahmane Sissako is among the world’s most important artists, even if few Westerners have heard of him. But Sissako lives in Paris (as does Hubert Sauper) and both his Oscar-nominated drama of life under sharia, “Timbuktu,” and his mesmerizing Brechtian courtroom drama “Bamako” – in which the West’s financial institutions are put on trial for their crimes against Africa – were made with European funding. One aspect of the systematic underdevelopment of Africa, one could argue, is that its film industries are entirely geared to entertainment product, and have no way to support noncommercial and unconventional work. Sauper has spent several years flying around Africa in his homemade plane, in search of the people, stories and images that other visitors don’t notice or deliberately ignore. (His previous film, the Oscar-nominated “Darwin’s Nightmare,” was more direct and didactic in tone but had a similar hypnotic power.) He is well aware that he belongs to the long tradition of “explorers” and “adventurers” who paved the way for the vicious exploitation of Africa’s natural and human resources, and that his claims to have different intentions may be viewed with reasonable suspicion. Even going back to the worst Western atrocities in Africa, like the near-genocidal reign of terror in the Belgian Congo, white interlopers have always persuaded themselves they were bringing the benefits of civilization to the “Dark Continent.” After Sauper lands his rickety aircraft in a remote Sudanese field, a young man who can read English translates his government papers for a local leader. “It says the whites come as friends,” he tells the dubious chief. They’ve heard that one before. I think Sauper is more than adroit enough to defend himself from charges of intellectual neocolonialism – or, more properly, to recognize that it’s there and use it to his advantage. By presenting himself as a holy fool in a flying tin can or a visiting space alien – in interviews, he has compared himself to the naïve, blustering and idealistic Captain Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise – he’s able to get inside institutional defenses in a way no ordinary journalist ever could. He attends an increasingly strange drunken party inside a Chinese-owned oil facility in northern Sudan, and somewhat later listens to a United Nations official blandly explain that the “development program” for South Sudan consists almost entirely of leasing the oil rights to Western energy conglomerates. On the other hand, Sauper makes no effort to speak to George Clooney, when the beneficent star shows up for a press event to celebrate South Sudan’s independence. Clooney and the Western media convinced us that the breakup of Sudan was necessary because of a brutal civil war between Arab Muslims and black Christians, which in turn produced the genocidal killings in Darfur. OK, yes -- but what lay behind those dreadful events? Sauper challenges us to see that as an ideological narrative that allows us to avoid deeper issues, including the historical power struggle that brought Christianity and Islam into conflict in that part of the world in the first place, and the present-day power struggle in which China and the United States carved up a poor, petroleum-rich and dysfunctional nation much as the Allies carved up Berlin in 1945. As in Joseph Conrad’s day, Africans are paying the price for the grand dreams cooked up in distant capitals. They also understand those dreams for what they are, and perceive the costs more clearly than we ever will. "We Come as Friends" is now playing at the IFC Center in New York. It opens Aug. 21 in Los Angeles and Washington; Aug. 26 in Boston; Aug. 28 in Chicago and San Francisco; and Sept. 11 in Denver, Santa Fe, N.M., Seattle and Columbus, Ohio, with more cities and home video to follow.
